I’m sat writing this review at the start of the last big weekend of the summer; the weather’s gorgeous and, as well as wishing I wasn’t stuck inside on my laptop worrying about getting this in on time, I’m thinking about how sometimes a great song can wreck the way you think of a potentially great band. This time last year, a song appeared – so fully-formed and perfectly-timed that I swear it was written by the spirit of summer itself. In the twelve months since I first heard (then bought, then wore out) a 45 called ‘Hey Boy’ by Magic Kids, I still can’t quite describe it better than the hackneyed “Langley Schools Music Project meets the Beach Boys” quip that everyone seems to say about it. But it’s fair and true – ‘Hey Boy’ spends just over two minutes reviving the sound of the sixties better than anyone else since the heyday of Elephant 6, with all the humour, warmth and attention to detail that most Spector/Wilson revivalists lack, from its glorious mono mix to the singer’s references to his “steady girl”. I didn’t know who the Magic Kids were. It didn’t matter. They’d written the last great song of the decade, and that should have been enough.

Still, the prospect of reviewing the album was too intriguing to pass up, but much like Girls’ disappointing Album, Memphis sounds like a deservedly blog-buzzed band being rushed into writing an LP they weren’t quite ready to make. Even the fleeting transmissions the band have provided between the single and the album have been slight-but-noticeable disappointments: the frothy ‘Superball’ emerged on a split single earlier this year, but was sadly overshadowed by the flipside, The Smith Westerns’ wonderful ‘Imagine Pt. 3′, while a YouTube interview had them stating their cringe-worthy modus operandi: “If it’s sad music, it’s bad music.” Oh. Fucking. Dear. Still, it would be wrong to chide Magic Kids for a lack of originality, since their spot-on pastiche was what drew me in initially, but there’s no divergence from the template; at best, tracks like ‘Summer’ cop their moves from The Beach Boys, and at worst, Herman’s Hermits. Likewise, the naïveté displayed over these eleven tracks just gets wearing, with the tracklist (‘Skateland’, ‘Phone’, ‘Little Red Radio’) reading like a laboured collection of early teenage buzzwords.

Memphis is certainly has its high points; ‘Candy’ sounds more contemporary than the rest of the record, references to “the drive-in” aside – a ping here, a jangle there and even some skittering beats towards its end – and the chorus’s pay-off (“There’s no candy sweeter than my baby”) would sound cloying, if it weren’t so sincerely sung. Near the record’s back end, ‘Sailin” veers on the right side of too-twee; blessed with a breezy acoustic backing, singer Bennett Foster evokes Jonathan Richman at his best, as he marvels how “the power of the wind is coming back in style again,” and the clever use of compression and static to make the following track sound like it’s emerging from a ‘Little Red Radio’ is just swell. Sadly, it heads straight into ‘Cry With Me Baby’ – it’s a jaunty enough way to send the record off, sure, but its ersatz skiffle beat sounds as authentic as Vincent Vincent and the Villains.

It’s impossible to fault Magic Kids’ intention to carry on the lineage of making “pocket symphonies for the kids,” but as with any sweet treat, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Bitesize portions always leaving you wanting more, and make you feel less sickly afterwards; and so it is with Memphis. Even over its scant half-hour running time, for all the detail and ambition, most of the hooks – and there are clearly a lot buried in here somewhere – just don’t stick, leaving you with a monstrous banquet that would be better served on individual seven-inch platters.